DVD Sales - Ratatouille Rules the Sales Chart

November 19th, 2007

Ratatouille led a large group of newreleases on this week's sales chart selling a massive 3.86 million units for first week sales of $57.82 million.
I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry was also a million unit seller after moving 1.21 million units for revenue of $20.51 million. Last week's winner, Spider-man 3, just missed that mark with 976,000 units for the week and 3.42 million units / $59.72 million in total. While those numbers are impressive, The Transformers has it topped with 8.15 million units / $187.45 million in sales, including 426,000 units / $9.80 million this past week. The final film in the top five was Deck the Halls with 289,000 units sold for $5.78 million in opening week sales.

There were plenty of other new releases to chart this week starting with Seinfeld - Season 9 with 157,000 units sold for $4.71 million in sales. However, it is worth noting that the first season sold millions of units; then again, the competition on the TV on DVD market is grown greatly since then, so those sales figures would be nearly impossible to achieve today. Just behind that release in eighth place was Sicko with 155,000 units sold and $3.10 million in sales. Just missing the top ten was Pixar'sShort Films Collection: Volume 1; this DVD didn't sell nearly as many copies as Ratatouille did, but 107,000 units and $2.14 million in sales is still a very good result. The final new release to chart was Flight of the Conchords - The Complete First Season, which made 56,000 fans while selling $1.12 million over its first week of sales.

Strangely, there have not been much buzz around the Blu-Ray sales of the three Pixar releases for the week. This could mean sales were disappointing, or it could be due recent... irregularities in reported figures they wanted to get them right this time. We do know that overall Blu-Ray was able to maintain its 65-35 edge over HD-DVD, which it has had for most of the year.
However, neither format has really taken off, and neither will until the format war ends.